Sunday, 11 November 2012

Hi everyone!
The purpose of this post is to generate feedback from you guys, our readers and proud 'citizens' of the digital world.

Here are two great videos presenting in a cool and artistic way some of the main issues and possibilities that come with Gamification!

Let us know, by posting a comment bellow, what your thoughts on Gamification are. How do you feel about Gamification? Do you think it is a good or a bad thing? Do you find yourself influenced by it? Can you give other examples of Gamification?

Saturday, 10 November 2012

Using gamification as a marketing
technique is a recent tool that has come into use. It only surfaced a
couple of years ago and has had quite a boom, due to a lot of people
feeling the need to be able to be more in contact with what they are
working / buying and selling with. The increase in people using gaming
and enjoying games that offer rewards, started the idea of offering
rewards for buying certain things. Like loyalty cards, members discount
etc. It has been proved that people are more lenient in buying something
if they can get something back in return.

This lead to us wanting to research into
whether this technique actually works, so we used a simple marketing
research technique to try to prove that gamification can have an effect
on people when asking them to do something as simple as completing a
survey. On October 25th we stood at the top of Wind Street and had 40 of
the same surveys twenty for the first hour and twenty for the second.
For the first hour we tried to get people to complete them, with little
luck, we only managed to obtain seven surveys. Then as we went into the
second hour, we pulled out a box of twenty chocolate bars and offered
them to people in return for completing the surveys. A simple concept but
gamification all the same a reward was offered to obtain, if it was a
survey for actual marketing research, results. In this second hour we
managed to get the full twenty surveys completed and with a lot of
enthusiasm from the people that participated as opposed to the people
who participated in the first hour who always seemed to be in a rush and
with little actual willingness to help us out.

This research
proves that by offering rewards to people, even the simplest of ones,
results can be achieved. So how can gamification not be a positive and
benefit people who are buying or selling.

Gamification is used widespread across
the world. Although it is used so readily and many people are using it
in their everyday lives; the average individual does not know what it
is. To make it easier to understand we are using o2 Priority Moments as a
working example of Gamification.

It was launched on
the 14th of July 2011; it gives their 22 million customers location
based deals, for example 45% off Odeon Cinema tickets and free
sandwiches from Upper Crust.

So how can this be good for O2?
Because, rewarding the O2 customers with discounts from other companies,
it will stimulate the customers to stay with O2’s phoning network. In
short, they are receiving more than just a mobile phone deal.

So
does this mean that Gamification works in the everyday society? From
looking into a poll with o2 users in all stages of life and careers, for
example University, teaching and the legal system it was noticed that
the younger generation (the student) rarely go into a contract, such as
with o2 without reaping other benefits, hence why o2 Priority Moments is
so popular with the students. However, it is no surprise that the older
generation are happy to sign themselves into a contract with no added
bonus. It could be argued that this is due to the fact that Gamification
has only been around in recent years, like the other examples on this
blog it can be seen that it is mainly the teenage to young adult
generation that are immersed in a technology ruled society and therefore
reap the benefits of Gamification, with perhaps the exception of the
loyalty card.

Another example of a phone network that really
submerges itself into the use of Gamification is Orange. Orange
Wednesdays has become known nationally as a massive bonus in joining
Orange. Orange Wednesdays give 2 for 1 cinema tickets every Wednesday of
the week. This use of Gamification created a boom in cinema usage and
also an increased number of people joining Orange phone company.

This
highlights just how important Gamification has become for the phone
networks of today. Yet, it is still amazing that most of society hardly
knows what Gamification is and that they are most probably using it every
single day.

‘Coca-Cola’ has been a trademark name ever since it was founded in
1886. ‘The ‘Coca-Cola’ company is the world’s leading manufacturer,
marketer and distributor of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and
syrups and produces nearly 400 brands’.

‘Coca-Cola’ is a
great example of an old company which has adapted exceptionally well to
the changing tendencies of the modern, digitalized world in order to
continue having a dominant market presence. When talking about
‘Coca-Cola’ and Gamification the first association that comes to mind is
‘CokeZone’(www.cokezone.co.uk).
CokeZone is a place where customers enter codes which they have
acquired from purchased products such as bottles, cans or packs of
drinks. For every entered code people are awarded points which they can
use to exchange for goods or enter prize draws - the more expensive the
purchased product is, the larger the amount of points awarded. Even
though CokeZone does not represent the typical gamification (game like)
model, it uses particular game mechanics such as points, rewards and
leader boards. It is natural for people to allot more value to things
perceived to have limited availability, which is a reason why people can
be driven to act when they believe that something is likely to become
scarce. Scarcity of goods or of time to enter a prize draw is one of the
main prompts which CokeZone uses to encourage users to participate.
CokeZone also ‘kindly’ reminds the users that if they do not
participate by submitting another code in a 90-day-period they
automatically lose all previously collected points – a thoughtful
strategy to keep people coming back. Consumers can also
earn additional number of points for completing short surveys about
their preferences and consumer habits. This is a clever incentive for
people to willingly provide valuable information. However, the usual
survey form which is time-consuming can often seem boring to people and
they might simply complete it without even considering giving a truthful
answer. The other problem with CokeZone is that people
are awarded with very little number of points even for the most
expensive products (most points are earned from 10 or 12 can packs only –
10pts; a 2 litre bottle is worth only 3 points). Therefore it would
take a lot of time or funds for a person to collect a decent amount of
points. And when, eventually, the points are collected, the goods they
can be exchanged for are usually of an insignificant value (a single
Coca-Cola glass is worth 150pts!). Thus many of the people who start
participating, such as myself, quickly get bored and abandon the process
of submitting codes.

Another example of Coca Cola’s
gamification is its relatively new campaign which was introduced in
America a year ago. Coke Freestyle is a multi-media, fully interactive
campaign which allows people to choose their own unique flavour
combinations from every Coca Cola brand. The freestyle machines were
located in numerous fast food restaurants across USA. The particularly
innovative strategy was to also create a game app for iphone and android
devices called PUSH+Play. The gameplay’s purpose shown below is taken
from the app’s description of the Play Store.GAMEPLAY:1. Watch the pattern of each button light up to the sounds. 2. Repeat the pattern and hit the PUSH button. 3. Complete each of the brand’s PUSH patterns to win the level and score awesome achievements!PUSH
your way to the top of the leaderboard and see how you rank against
others around the world. Plus, rack up bragging rights by earning badges
like “Lightning Fast” and “Brainiac!” Share ‘em with your friends to
see who’s the real PUSH! + Play pro!

The Coke Freestyle
game app is a substantially subtle strategy for marketing research. The
app collects data which delivers unique and individual customer
insight. Unintentionally people using the freestyle app take part in a
really truthful survey for personal preference. This is a great
advancement in data collection and survey taking. Consumers are much
less likely to be biased and they provide greater contextual
information. They also have a good reason to be truthful about their
choice considering the fact that they will be the ones consuming the
final product. The interactive nature of the game reflects a concrete
personal choice, not influenced by mass opinion and standards… Thus
gamification in this case can be seen as a positive for both consumers
and producers.

Coca-Cola’s variation of use of
gamification does not end with Coke Freestyle. The company introduces a
number of different innovative and, most importantly, fun gamification
concepts. The following videos show how the Coca-Cola marketing company
has been able, through gamification, to do something much more important
and difficult than simply selling a product. It has been able to
transform a non-alcoholic drink to a synonym of happiness and joy; to
connect with the younger generation, reflect its energy and convey the
idea that Coca-Cola is all about having fun!

Friday, 9 November 2012

Hey, everybody! Let me enlighten you on the premise
of this blogger account. We are a bunch of (cough) highly-intelligent,
motivationally driven students studying New Media at Swansea University,
tasked with researching an area of our choice from the module.
Naturally, we chose the one thing on the list we had never heard of and
had no idea what on earth it could be. This was ‘Gamification as a
marketing tool’. As such we will be posting various
case studies, videos, articles and pictures which illustrate our
research and develop an understanding of this alien concept with the
positives and negatives it breeds.

———————————————————————-

Gamification, a concept all of us in our group were
not accustomed to when we started this New Media module. However once
we delved into the vast world of resources readily available from the
internet, we could see that the model of Gamification is simple and more
visible than you may think.

So what is Gamification? Concisely it’s the concept
of applying game-mechanics or concepts to a task which is devoid of
them in the norm. Put simply its taking a day to day task and applying
any kind of game criteria to it; targets, goals, levels etc. A prime
example of this in marketing would be loyalty bonuses for shopping, such
as Tesco’s Clubcard scheme, shoppers are rewarded for shopping with
points which lead to a discounts and offers on their next shop.
Therefore the more they shop, the more points they gain and in turn the
more rewards they receive. The Clubcard scheme shows how powerful
Gamification can be as a marketing tool and also highlights how long
this concept has been around. In terms of marketing Gamification can
also be used as a tool to gain market research, game related consumer
surveys would be the most obvious example of this, but recent advances
in technology and the mainstream grasping of location technology has led
to an amalgamation of loyalty and market research. Applications such as
‘Foursquare’ allow consumers to gain bonuses for repeatedly visiting
the same businesses whilst providing market data for the businesses
themselves. (Both of the above schemes/apps will be covered in later
case studies.)

How effective is Gamification? Well if you were to
listen to Ian Bogost you side to believe that “Gamification is
bullshit.” Or to elaborate further: “More specifically, Gamification is
marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the
wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in
the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already
reigns anyway.” Bogost clearly isn’t a fan of our projects topic; he
argues that Gamification focuses too heavily on levels and points,
instead of highlighting primary features such as interactions with
behavioural complexity. He goes on to clarify that this doesn’t matter
to the companies using it because all they can focus on is finalising a
sale, which Gamification effectively does. Although Bogost clearly
disagrees with the strategies used within the current yardstick of
Gamification used by mainstream companies today, he never doubts its
effectiveness, only its moral integrity when slumbered into gaming
categories. This stands to reason that Gamification does clearly have a
place within marketing and research, albeit misconstrued in a gaming
sense.

Hopefully now we have some background knowledge of
this concept to draw upon and use when studying our case studies and
discovering the ever expanding world of Gamification.